I can say this as a co-maintainer of 2 large projects (salt and graphite). 1. Look for community ie: mailing list, irc, im, github, etc, etc 2. Look at commit

I can say this as a co-maintainer of 2 large projects (salt and graphite). 1. Look for community ie: mailing list, irc, im, github, etc, etc 2. Look at commit frequency. How often do they commit. Is the project abandoned? 3. See if the developers are friendly. Feel free to email / im / chat with the developers. Ask what you can do to help. Keep in mind contributing does not mean code code code. It can mean triaging bugs, updating documentation, herding other community members towards the right things, etc. Hit me up with more questions if you want: jeffschroeder@computer.org